By the end of the twentieth century, the American landscape had been transformed by revolutionary technology, an influx of people, and an unprecedented economic boom. No region of the nation was more affected than the West. Indeed, the shape and meaning of the West was, by the millennium, in doubt. According to popular thinking, the old Rocky Mountain West had been a wild, untamed place. But now it seemed that a somehow smaller, more accessible "New West" had arisen. This New West, a region as much cultural as geographical, seemed in danger of becoming just another place in a homogeneous landscape.

1. On the whole, are the changes in the Western landscape positive or negative?

2. Is the West still "Western?"

3. Can you imagine other ways of mapping historical change in the West?